Medication containers, particularly those for prescribed medications, require specific written instructions for a patient with regard to dosages and other special instructions to be printed on a label and affixed to the container, or to be packaged with the container. Instructions may be provided from the patient's physician, the drug manufacturer, or the distributor.
Written instructions that are provided with medications are subject to various shortcomings attributable to various factors including limited writing space, poor vision, low literacy level of the patient, primary spoken language of the patient, potential for physical damage to or smudging of written labels, and misplacing of enclosed instructions. For example, written instructions that are required to be fixed to the outside of the medication container on a label must be printed in letters large enough to be seen by the reader, yet small enough to enable the complete instructions to be printed on the label which is relatively limited in writing area. This may result in medication labels that are in print that are too small to be read by people with poor vision, without the need for magnifiers or other vision aids. In some situations it may be necessary for instructions to be written very concisely to fit on a label. This sometimes results in language being omitted for the sake of brevity thereby rendering the instructions deficient or difficult to comprehend. In other situations, where the label or instructions are written in a language that is not the native or first language of the patient, it may be difficult for the patient to understand the instructions. Labels fixed to medication containers are subject to wear, smudging, and moisture, which may result in damage to the label so that it cannot be read. Lastly, certain enclosed instructions and warnings that may have been enclosed in the manufacturer's packaging, but not printed on a label, may be misplaced or otherwise separated from the medication container.